(Loading area announcements.)

SAFETY ANNOUNCER
The sliding doors of your Time Machine will close automatically. For your safety, remain seated with your hands, arms, feet, and legs inside the vehicle, and please watch your children. Please take small children by the hand, and watch your step on the moving platform. The platform is moving at the same speed as your Time Machine vehicle. Please take small children by the hand, and watch your step onto the moving platform. The platform and your time machine vehicle are moving at the same speed.
(Guests board time machine vehicles)
During your slow-moving journey, your Time Machine will slowly rotate backwards and may stop momentarily. For your safety, remain seated at all times.

COMPUTER ANNOUNCER
This is Spaceship Earth control. On behalf of Siemens, welcome aboard! On the map in front of you, please show us where you’re from while we input your time-travel coordinates.
(Guests select language, hometown on computer.)
Now locate the monitor overhead to the right.  Make sure your face is clearly visible, and wait for the flash.
(Guests are photographed.)
Good! Sending photo to the future. All systems are go. Linking you now to your guide.

NARRATOR (DAME JUDI DENCH)
Like a grand and miraculous spaceship, our planet has sailed through the universe of time; and for a brief moment we have been among it’s passengers. But where are we going? And what kind of future will we discover there? Surprisingly, the answers lie in our past. Since the dawn of recorded history, we’ve been inventing the future one step at a time. So let’s travel back in time together. I’ll show you how our ancestors created the world we know today, and then it will be your turn to create the world of tomorrow.

Here, in this hostile world, is where our story begins. We are alone, struggling to survive until we learn to communicate with one another. Now we can hunt as a team and survive together.

It takes 15,000 years to come up with the next bright idea: recording our knowledge on cave walls. There was only one small problem, when we moved, the recorded knowledge stayed behind.

Now, let’s move ahead to ancient Egypt, because something is about to happen here that will change the future forever. This unknown Egyptian pounding reeds flat is inventing papyrus—a sort of paper. Papyrus, in turn, creates better record keeping of plans, designs, and unfortunately taxes. But it also brings with it the dawn of great civilizations.

At this point, each civilization has its own form of writing, which none of the others can understand. But the Phoenicians, who trade with all of them, have a solution. They create a simple, common alphabet, adaptable to most languages. Remember how easy it was to learn your ABC’s? Thank the Phoenicians—they invented them.

The ancient Greeks were great inventors of the future. First, they established public schools, and then begin teaching an intriguing new subject called mathematics. And with math comes mechanical technology and the birth of a high-tech life we enjoy today.

GREEK SCHOLAR
(Speaking Greek)

NARRATOR
With lessons learned from the Greeks, the Romans create a powerful empire. To move their armies around, they build a system of roads all over the known world. Rome built the first “world wide web,” and it’s leading us into the future.

ROMAN MERCHANT
(Speaking Latin)

NARRATOR
But then we hit a roadblock—Rome falls, and the great Library of Alexandria in Egypt is burned. Much of our learning is destroyed—lost forever… or so we think.

THREE MEN
(Speaking Arabic)

It turns out there are copies of some of these books in the libraries of the Middle East, being watched over by Arab and Jewish scholars. Call it the first backup system. The books are saved, and with them our dreams of the future.

In the meantime, here in Europe, monks toil endlessly, recording books by hand—but that is about to change.

In 1450, Gutenberg invents the movable type printing press. Now knowledge can travel as fast as these new books… and travel they do.

Books make it easier to invent the future in every field, and the result is an incredible explosion of innovation that we call the Renaissance.

TWO MEN
(Reading from book in Italian)

CHOIR (Singing)
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah, etc.

NARRATOR
Books, it seems, were just the beginning. Now communication technology races headlong into the future, and soon people all over the world are sharing life’s most important moments faster than ever before.

PAPER BOY
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Lee surrenders at Appomattox! Civil War is over! Extra! Extra!

SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR
I’m sorry, that line is busy. One moment please. One moment, I’ll transfer you.

RADIO ANNOUNCER
And today, we received word that Amelia Earhart has landed safe and sound in Wales. Today, July 19th, 1948, will forever be known as the day that she flew across the Atlantic and into the hearts of people around the world. Amelia Earhart has gone where no other woman has gone before!

NARRATOR
By now, we’re all communicating from anywhere on Earth—and in 1969, from somewhere else.

NEIL ARMSTRONG
It’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.

NARRATOR
To send a man to the moon, we had to invent a new language, spoken not by man, but by computers—at first very large, very expensive computers—but we see the potential.

What if everyone could have one of these amazing machines in their own house? There’s just one problem: they’re as big as a house. The solution comes in, of all places, a garage in California. Young people with a passion for shaping the future put the power of the computer in everyone’s hands. Together, we form a super network that goes with billions of interactions, and once again we stand on the brink of a new Renaissance.

After 30,000 years of time travel, here we are—a truly global community, poised to shape the future of this, our Spaceship Earth.

SAFETY ANNOUNCER
Please remain seated. Your Time Machine will be rotating backward for your return to Earth. In preparation for your return to Earth, your Time Machine will be rotating backward. Please remain seated.

NARRATOR
For the first time in history, all of us can have a say about the kind of world we want to live in. The choices we have made for the past 30,000 years have been inventing the future one day at a time. And now, it’s your turn.

Let’s have some fun creating the future, shall we? On your computer screen, answer a few questions for us. Then, we’ll show you a new world, custom made just for you. Ready?

Well done! Now along with your answers let’s add in some amazing new technology that we happen to know about.

And now, I believe your future is just about ready. Let’s take a look, shall we?

VIDEO ANNOUNCER
Welcome to the future! Or should I say your future!
(Video customized based on guest selections.)
The end. Or should I say “the beginning”… of your future!

NARRATOR
So here’s to the next 30,000 years on Spaceship Earth. While no one knows for sure what we’ll see or do, I do know it will be quite an adventure—an adventure that we’ll take and make together. See you in the future!

SAFETY ANNOUNCER
Welcome back, time travelers. Now, Siemens invites you to visit Project Tomorrow—an exciting world of new ideas and innovations, made possible by Siemens’ ingenuity.

Your vehicle doors will open automatically. Please keep your hands  away from the doors, and step carefully onto the moving platform.

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